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Monthly Archives: August 2013

aimed at destroying the forest and jungle cover used by enemy North Vietnamese and Viet Cong troops fighting against U.S. and South Vietnamese forces in the Vietnam War. U.S. aircraft were deployed to spray powerful mixtures of herbicides around roads, rivers, canals and military bases, as well as on crops that might be used to supply enemy troops. During this process, crops and water sources used by the non-combatant peasant population of South Vietnam could also be hit. In all, Operation Ranch Hand deployed more than 19 million gallons of herbicides over 4.5 million acres of land.

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The most commonly used, and most effective, mixture of herbicides used was Agent Orange

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Effects on US war veterans

In 1979, a class action lawsuit was filed on behalf of 2.4 million veterans who were exposed to Agent Orange during their service in Vietnam. Five years later, in an out-of-court-settlement, seven large chemical companies that manufactured the herbicide agreed to pay $180 million in compensation to the veterans or their next of kin. Various challenges to the settlement followed, including lawsuits filed by some 300 veterans, before the U.S. Supreme Court confirmed it in 1988. By that time, the settlement had risen to some $240 million including interest.

Effects on Vietnam

In addition to the massive environmental impact of the U.S. defoliation program in Vietnam, that nation has reported that some 400,000 people were killed or maimed as a result of exposure to herbicides like Agent Orange. In addition, Vietnam claims half a million children have been born with serious birth defects, while as many 2 million people are suffering from cancer or other illness caused by Agent Orange.

In 2004, a group of Vietnamese citizens filed a class-action lawsuit against more than 30 chemical companies, including the same ones that settled with the U.S. veterans in 1984. The suit, which sought billions of dollars worth of damages, claimed that Agent Orange and its poisonous effects left a legacy of health problems and that its use constituted a violation of international law. In March 2005, a federal judge in Brooklyn, New York, dismissed the suit; another U.S. court rejected a final appeal in 2008.

A poll in France revealed that most French people do not want their country to take part in military action on Syria, and most do not trust the president, François Hollande to do so.

The poll was published by Le Parisien-Aujourd’hui en France on Saturday, showed 64% of respondents opposed military action, 58% did not trust Hollande to conduct it and 35% feared it could “set the entire region ablaze”.

“The people responsible for the spreading of 400 tons of DU there [Southern Iraq] in 1991 were conducting a very peculiar sort of experiment — one in which the ‘guinea-pigs’ were the soldiers and civilians present … and in which the ‘experimenters’ did not want to know the results.”

“The memory of the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed or poisoned by the U.S. in Iraq, Afghanistan, Kuwait, Bosnia, Kosovo, Somalia and Yemen should give pause to today’s gung-ho warriors”

“Intercepted phone calls that will be presented by the Obama administration as proof that Bashar Al-Assad was behind last week’s chemical weapons attack in Syria actually suggest that the attack was not ordered by the Syrian government.”

“Al-Qa’ida and associated extremist groups have a wide variety of potential agents and delivery means to choose from for chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) attacks…however, most attacks by the group—and especially by associated extremists—probably will be small scale, incorporating relatively crude delivery means and easily produced or obtained chemicals, toxins, or radiological substances…Analysis of an al-Qa’ida document recovered in Afghanistan in summer 2002 indicates the group has crude procedures for making mustard agent, sarin, and VX.”

“Officials in the US and the UK have made it clear that any decision to proceed with military action will be based on intelligence gathered by the US, and not the findings brought back by the UN inspectors currently on the ground in Syria.”

“One such case is the sad story of a young Christian boy named Salim Nahhas, whose siblings I knew quite well. He was only 19 when he died fighting with the regime against the rebels in the Rashdeen area of Aleppo in July 2013.
But the most remarkable aspect of Nahhas’ story is that most of his family was initially with the uprising and against the regime, some even taking part in protests and later aid work for the displaced. That was before Aleppo was invaded by the rebels in the summer of 2012 and before rebel mortar shells hit Nahhas’ neighborhood, killing some of his friends and neighbors. Since then, many things have changed in Aleppo.”